Interfacing with God

At the end of the year 2006, I first started questioning my beliefs. I was born in a Muslim family. I learned the traditions and cultures of Islam from my family and society. I learned how to read Arabic so that I can read and recite some parts of the Quran. But, a very essential part was missing. That is the knowledge of why.

Now, I am doing my masters in computer and communications engineering. I am doing my research in integrated circuits. In my part time jobs I design web based systems and system on FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array). The thing that I came to learn and learning day by day is that for any communication system its just about interfaces and protocols. To make communication possible between two devices, the interfaces between the two devices should match and they should know each other and use a common protocol. Any communication system that we see, what ever complex it may be seen, base on this very simple concept. Its interface and protocol. Just like we talk to another person. The interfaces are the mouth and the ear. The protocol is the language that we use to communicate.

Now I look at the universe around us. What I see is lots of communication systems. Any living object consists of thousands of, millions of communication systems. Every communication system uses predefined interfaces and protocols. We see around us the hard objects (the visible things). But above these hard objects there are abstract objects for example the protocols. Here is this physical universe and many layers of abstractions over this physical universe. So, it is just the beginning to know the physical universe. The main knowledge lies on those abstractions.

According to many religions, we are supposed make a relationship with God. It is globally accepted that the relationship can be made by doing some act of worship. For example, doing regular prayers, fasting, giving charity etc. The concept gives all the importance to the acts themselves. That means, if you give a charity you will get a certain amount of reward. If you pray prayer you will get a certain amount of reward. We can count the good deeds and the bad deeds, and if your good deeds overcome the bad deeds then we will get permission to enter paradise. But, there is a problem with this concept. That is where is the relationship with God?

We are living in a universe full of communication systems and abstractions and we are supposed to make relationship with God. Then isn't it natural and logical to think that then there must be some way to communicate with God? There must be some interfaces and protocols by which we can communicate with God. As we can understand from our life, relationship can only be established when there is communication. That is why communication is such important. So, if it is true that God created us with a purpose and we are supposed to make relationship with God, then there must be a way to communicate with God. What is the way?

Lets take the final revelation of God, the Quran, and examine is there anything that indicates any way to communicate with God. In fact, it does. In every page of the Quran we see that God is reminding us of some of His attributes like mercifulness, love, protecting, fulfilling the need, judgement, fashioning, architect, creator, initiating something, repeating something, healing and many more. God is constantly and repeatedly reminding us of these attributes and telling us that He is those attributes. As in any communication system we have interfaces and protocols that both parties know, we share the same attributes with God. We know what mercy is, we know what love is, we know what fulfilling the need of the poor is. We actually have some interfaces and protocols that we share with God. The interface is the heart or mind of us and the protocols are the attributes described by God. What is the interface in God's part. That we do not know and cannot know. Because if God is Absolute and eternal, then there is no way we the relational and not eternal beings can characterize him. What we can do is to find the interfaces and protocols needed to make communication with God within ourselves.

But, how can we know that the communication has been done? What is the medium for the communication? The answer relies deeply on understanding who we are? Is the body that I have is me? I am for the answer NO. My answer is my consciousness is me. My knowledge is me. What is the consciousness? Its an abstract object that we all have, we all can understand and feel our consciousnesses. That consciousness is me. The Quran actually says similar kind of things. That is we are our souls. Quran tells us to send good acts for our souls. It is the soul that we will see in the hereafter. The development of Soul is described using a very beautiful parable in the Quran. That is our souls are like a garden of plants, but when we do some evil action, the condition of that garden is like a heavy tornedo has just gone over it and the plants are squeezed, hurt and destroyed by that tornedo. Now we focus on our lives. When we do something really good, we feel a very good pleasure, we often describe that as heavenly pleasure. We feel the growth of something in our heart. Similarly, when we do something evil out of our active consciousness, we feel the pain and fire in our heart. We feel that something is being destroyed in our heart and unless we fix it up we are going to feel the pain for ever.

When the attributes of God are being practiced and developed in our heart, we make a communication with God. The confirmation of the communication or the received signal is the feelings that we have in our heart. We do our acts so that these attributes can be developed in our souls. So, the act itself is of no importance. Physical acts are only needed to develop the attributes in our hearts. Only if we can make a physical act from our complete consciousness, then the corresponding attributes will be developed in our hearts. If the act is done from not of ones consciousness, then my opinion is that development of the attributes are not possible. Just like in the communication system, if you do not send any signal you will not get any communication done, all there will be just some noise. We have to make conscious decisions to do a certain act, only thus the act will produce the abstract objects which are the attributes. Using those attributes we prepare to communicate with God. God in response through the super communication system which is this universe, sends the feeling of happiness and peace, sometimes the feeling is well beyond any description.

To the people of many religions who spend quite a lot of time in doing worship, I am making an earnest request to you to rethink about the whole concept. The act itself is not important but the value that it brings in our heart that is important. Any act can bring the attributes of God in our hearts, whether it is giving a smile to others, or wishing the welfare of others, or protecting the people from the aggression, or spreading knowledge among others, or teaching somebody, or making some machines for the welfare of mankind. There are million ways to produce God's attributes and we should not only focus on some particular act of worship. Ritual worships are important to build ourselves for the acts to produce God's attributes. But, if we miss the concept that we are to make relationship with God by communicating with God, I fear that worships only will not help us in the hereafter.